This site is updated Thursday at noon with a new article about an artistic pursuit generally considered to be beneath consideration. James Schellenberg probes science-fiction, Carol Borden draws out the best in comics, Chris Szego dallies with romance, and Ian Driscoll stares deeply into the screen.
While the writers have considerable enthusiasm for their subjects, they don't let it numb their critical faculties. Tossing away the shield of journalistic objectivity and refusing the shovel of fannish boosterism, they write in the hopes of starting honest and intelligent discussions about these oft-enjoyed but rarely examined artforms. Click here for the writer's bios and their individual takes on the gutter.
Recent Features
Red Eye
15 hours on the road and I was my own red-eye on I-94's corridor of stripclubs, fireworks and roadkill, racing past dead deer in Michigan, then Gary, Indiana's steel mills and through Chicagoland, the Sears Tower in the distance waiting for its evil eye, till the highway gave out in Wisconsin. Yes, I went to WisCon 32, the world's oldest feminist science fiction convention. And there I felt deeper fatigue than 15 hours, 2 countries, 4 states and 2 time zones. Zombie fatigue.
Prince Caspian, a lesser-known entry in the Narnia series, is a book with not much substance. The recent movie actually streamlines the story, eliminating flashbacks and so forth. What fills the running time back up? Why, war of course.
Continue reading...
Peanut Butter and Jayne
No matter the genre or subject, every reader has her Absolute Favourite writers. The ones whose books she’ll charge the stores to get, and drop everything to read. Diving into those books is a particularly edifying treat, a gourmet of literary delight. But there’s more than one kind of favourite. Sometimes a reader wants plain and simple -- sometimes the hankering for peanut butter wins out over a new gustatory adventure. Occasionally, you just want something comforting, familiar, and, though it may not be the fanciest item to ever hit the palate, a taste you know you’ll like.
That’s pretty much how I feel about Jayne Ann Krentz.
You thought that title was going to lead to some sort of evaluation of a romance novel - flowery, overwrought and probably twee as hell. In fact, it’s the title of an essay collection: Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women; Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance , edited by Jayne Ann Krentz (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).
That’s ‘appeal’, by the way, not ‘defence’. If anyone is aware that the romance genre needs no justification, it’s this group of women. Most of the contributors have other credits besides writer on their CVs: before they achieved success as romance novelists, they were teachers, journalists, lawyers, engineers. All of them are successful multi-published authors.
With a Master’s degree in Library Science, academic librarian Krentz has the academic chops to put this kind of collection together. Former academic librarian: she is now and has been for years (decades even) a NYT bestselling romance author. Her own essay on how to decode the meanings embedded in the traditional language of the romance is an interesting read. Her basic point is that commonly used phrases, the kind that get romances labeled ‘trash’ in academic communities, are not cliches, but touchstones which immediately evoke layered emotional responses. Romances, she says, are full of phrases which are as cliched - and yet evoke as much expectation - as ‘once upon a time’.
Not all of the essays are created equal, of course. A few are slight in nature, in content little better than puff pieces, though even one or two of those are well-written enough to be enjoyable. Better, and more informative, are two facts-and-figures essays: one that explores the genre’s tremenous market share; another that describes the timeline from Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) to the modern day romance, (or at least to the romances of 1992) demonstrating how each development was in fact a subtle subversion of the social mores of its day.
There are several essays on the nature and appeal of the heroine; interestingly, there are almost twice as many on the nature and appeal of the hero. And no, they’re not the salacious kind. One dispells traditional myths of reader identification, and makes an po-mo argument for placeholder characters. Another essay attempts to prove that the romance maps a psychological journey through a Freudian landscape – and while Freudian psychology both amuses and enrages me, it was still a well-informed piece. Several others examine different facets of the hero’s character and function. Taken all together, one is left in no doubt that the central fantasy of the modern romance novel is not that women require rescue, but that men are capable of change.
Fantasy is another element that comes up constantly, in a 'romances-are-fantasy-and-we-know
you--won’t-insult-us-by-assuming-we-can’t-tell-the-difference’ sort of way. It usually appears as a matter-of-fact statement, but the frequent repetition makes it obvious just how often that baseless argument is levelled at readers (and writers) of romance. Fiction and reality occupy two separate planes, and no one knows that better than the people who make their livings creating the former.
Again, though, the collection is not a defence, not an attempt to convince people who don’t like the genre to change their minds. If someone doesn’t care for the underlying structure and story of a romance, no argument will ever convince her otherwise. Besides, approval is not required. Instead, the essays try to open a window, to offer insight into what makes the genre so very popular. And it is immensely popular. As a genre, romance doesn’t just overcomes rejection, dismissal, and ridicule; it smashes sales records, powers the paperback publishing business, and crosses cultural barriers in unexpected ways. As Krentz says in her introduction, “the fact that so many women persist in reading and enjoying romance novels in the face of generations of relentless hostility says something profound not only about women’s courage, but about the appeal of the books”.
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Chris Szego knows that next week is banned book week in the US, and plans to spend it reading Charles Darwin and JK Rowling in sympathy.
Chuck your 2¢ into the Gutter
Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women - The Cultural Gutter
Predictably enough, you get to see The Hulk smash. But he also pets a kitten. Recreates the Pieta. Feeds a deer. Is afraid of a bug. Whitewashes a fence. And does much, much, more - all for charity - at the 100 Hulks Charity Auction Gallery. Also, Part II. Also, Part III.
~
View all Notes here. Seen something shiny? Gutter-talk worth hearing? Let us know!
15 hours on the road and I was my own red-eye on I-94's corridor of stripclubs, fireworks and roadkill, racing past dead deer in Michigan, then Gary, Indiana's steel mills and through Chicagoland, the Sears Tower in the distance waiting for its evil eye, till the highway gave out in Wisconsin. Yes, I went to WisCon 32, the world's oldest feminist science fiction convention. And there I felt deeper fatigue than 15 hours, 2 countries, 4 states and 2 time zones. Zombie fatigue.
Prince Caspian, a lesser-known entry in the Narnia series, is a book with not much substance. The recent movie actually streamlines the story, eliminating flashbacks and so forth. What fills the running time back up? Why, war of course.
No matter the genre or subject, every reader has her Absolute Favourite writers. The ones whose books she’ll charge the stores to get, and drop everything to read. Diving into those books is a particularly edifying treat, a gourmet of literary delight. But there’s more than one kind of favourite. Sometimes a reader wants plain and simple -- sometimes the hankering for peanut butter wins out over a new gustatory adventure. Occasionally, you just want something comforting, familiar, and, though it may not be the fanciest item to ever hit the palate, a taste you know you’ll like.
C’mon, admit it. 
Not all of the essays are created equal, of course. A few are slight in nature, in content little better than puff pieces, though even one or two of those are well-written enough to be enjoyable. Better, and more informative, are two facts-and-figures essays: one that explores the genre’s tremenous market share; another that describes the timeline from Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) to the modern day romance, (or at least to the romances of 1992) demonstrating how each development was in fact a subtle subversion of the social mores of its day.